Summary One must act and yet remain as though one has not acted. Within the action, the separate self must not stand as its author. Likewise, one must remember Kudalasangama…

Summary The forms of Mahalinga are not realities apart from Mahalinga. Linga is not one thing while its manifestation is another; it is not separate from the conjunction of body,…

Summary During the Great Dissolution, earth subsides into water, water into fire, fire into air, and air into space. Alongside this elemental return, Brahma subsides into Vishnu, Vishnu into Rudra,…

Summary Like the maruga plant whose fragrance arises with its very birth, true spiritual quality is natural rather than borrowed. What is merely acquired falls away under Hara’s prompting. A…

Summary When the mind has merged into Maha, the Great Reality, it is delusion to imagine that embodied life can still move as an independent existence. True realization must be…

Summary The mind becomes the sacred ablution, the body becomes the throne, and remembrance becomes the casket that bears the Linga. In this condition, there is neither a separate act…

Summary The Bhēruṇḍa bird has two heads but only one body. Even if a partition is placed between the heads, milk given to one and poison to the other enter…

Summary Basavanna refuses the company of the Bhavi because that association leads again into endless bhava—repeated becoming and birth. He also refuses the worship of another deity because divided devotion…

Summary Basavanna calls everyone to the wedding named Bhakti-rati. An oleander blossom becomes the wedding ring, jasmine forms the ceremonial curtain, chrysanthemums raise the canopy, and every variety of flower…

Summary Seeing devotion become a fever that drives people toward the difficult outward ascent to Kailāsa, Basavanna’s mind feels deeply ashamed. Kailāsa, he says, is only a mound upon the…